Man needs work as much as personal freedom,it's not mutually exclusive, rather what one seek is personal freedom in doing work rather than freedom from work.
Time is not far off, when all man needs can be manufactured or provided by AI and robots, moot question is if man's left with personal freedom to choose what he wants to do, it will be a sure cause for depression and boredom. Man needs not just freedom but also needs social recognition, competition, rivalry, one upmanship, politics, laws, restriction its breaking laws and restriction that gives men a sense if previlage, not Removal of laws curtailing freedom.

This sort of thinking is a kind of madness which arises when we decide to accept what is unacceptable, to my mind. Prison is a good thing which cures me of what I am inflicted by. My brother only hits me because he loves me so much. Work is actually necessary for freedom. The peasants need the nobles to structure their lives and give it meaning.

I can acknowledge you may be different. But I'll gladly forgo that need and suffer the horrible bondage that comes from not having to clock in -- were it consequence free, at least.

I heartily concur.

These are exactly the social relations and values that I am questioning. Perhaps @Bitter Crank can add some force to this. BC, do you think these purported values of work are necessary or a notion we picked up and just accept. Do we humans have no more imagination than "recognition, competition, rivalry, one upmanship" and the like that supposedly comes from work.

A) Should we strive for these values?

B) Are these values simply manufactured by those who want to see these values manifest?

C) Doesn't the very fact that we would be "bored" without these things, as you claim, provide some insight into existence itself?

Deeply amusing that -- in a pseudo-economic analysis -- you forgot to mention the dangers inflation.

Anyway, the more I read what others people have to say about UBI, the more I become sceptical -- I was very much in favour.

But great economists like Friedman and Hayek -- who both proposed this unoriginal idea, but in different forms -- to me seem too naive. They forget about the political and ideological aspect of the debate. Even if we can create a macrosocio-economic system that contains UBI as envisioned by these two gentlemen -- and I think we can, don't get me wrong -- it will be inevitable that the political pressure from the left side will lead to an unsustainable high UBI, as the mere socialist rhetoric of social rights (read entitlements) will dominate the elections. Right of have food, right to housing, right to have clothes, right to have an smart phone, right to a car, right to all have a tesla car of $100k, etcetera.

It is a tug-of-war where the feel-good emotional "arguments" will prevail and the wise informed economic arguments will land like a dry fart. A war left wingers will win, easily -- because while facts > feelings, in politics feelings > facts.

Man needs work as much as personal freedom, it's not mutually exclusive, rather what one seek is personal freedom in doing work rather than freedom from work. — Krupzzq

This sort of thinking is a kind of madness which arises when we decide to accept what is unacceptable, to my mind. — Moliere

Homo Faber (man the maker) needs "work", work being purposeful activity to obtain the satisfactions of needs (food, shelter, reproduction, clothing if needed for climate) and the fulfillment of wants -- aesthetic creation, love, companionship, exploration, and so on. In this technological age, crowded world, governed and policed societies, the most we can hope for are societies structured and operating loosely enough that individuals and groups can find the necessary 'space' to live the kind of life they desire to live.

Certainly many people do not find the restrictions and conformity of the work place troublesome, (clocking in on down to clocking out). A loose society has room for regimented factories and hippie colonies.

The problem for those who exploit the nooks and crannies of a loose society is when things are tightened up, screwed down, brightly lit all night and surveilled remotely, policed 24/7, and very thoroughly managed.

By my definition, the looser and healthier society is one which does not seek to track every social movement and every political action, does not compile databases of social deviants, does not strive to restrict personal freedom, across the board for political, social, sexual, literary... expression, and so on. It doesn't matter in some ways whether it's the CIA or Facebook & Google that are doing the tracking and compiling.

Societies in which the dominant classes (the richest, most powerful, the classes who feel they have quite a lot to lose) feel insecure are the societies where the screws will be tightened the most.

The federal government spends, and has spent, a great deal of money on causes which are not especially worthwhile. Iraq, Afghanistan, tax rebates for the wealthy, agricultural subsidies, industrial tax breaks, and so forth. The figure for all these things runs into the trillions, for which we have almost nothing to show.

Some inflation seems to be thought essential In a capitalist economy, provided the volume of economic activity is solid. While the UBI would increase government spending, at the same time other government spending would be eliminated: The various state welfare and unemployment programs, food security programs, and so forth might amount to 1 trillion dollars a year. Were a UBI to be instituted, most of these welfare and unemployment programs would disappear (because they would be redundant).

Does this pass your muster as amusing pseudo-economics?

it will be inevitable that the political pressure from the left side will lead to an unsustainable high UBI, as the mere socialist rhetoric of social rights (read entitlements) will dominate the elections. — Kitty

The left yammers about social rights a lot, true enough (it's dirty work but somebody has to do it) but not since the Johnson Administration has a major new program been instituted (Johnson instituted Medicare In the 1960s) and welfare payments are niggardly*** despite all the socialists complaints, even in northern liberal states. I'm not counting Obama care as a significant new program--it's still not clear it will exist very long or in what form.

*** Note to politically correct persons: 'Niggardly' is neither derived from nor is the source of the word 'nigger'. So just relax. You all have hereby been headed off at the pass.

Excellent points.

Our highly constructive age (buildings, cities, pyramids) isn't very old in relationship to our species age. If we've been around for tens of thousands of years, the first mud brick town is only about 9,000 years old, and that was a fairly modest affair. In between bursts of bigness (several ancient civilizations) life quieted down again. After the western Roman Empire fizzled out (about 500 A.D.) there were about 900 years of European peasants and very minor lords living quietly. Then things started heating up again, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and here we are.

Cultural code is an important driver, along with our genetic code. When the resources are aligned just right, we are driven to start building again, and after all that ends up in ruin, we give up angel food cake and go back to black bread and turnips for a few centuries.

We learn again and again about taking what we need and leaving the rest, but we keep forgetting it. Unfortunately our cultural codes over-ride humble truths and we decide to take everything if at all possible, or at least as much as we can cart away.

IF, and it's a huge 400 ft high IF, we could take just what we needed and leave the rest, we could all live a simpler life, but we could all live. 21st Century "post-industrial" civilization is doomed (planet wide) and the survivors of the doom will be forced to live a much simpler, harder life. But that's another thread.

The thing about the UBI, or an advanced economy anywhere, is that if one lives simply one wouldn't have to work so much. But living simply is hard -- the cultural code doesn't encourage it. Even simpler living is viewed as something of a pathology. There are barriers put I'm the way. — Bitter Crank

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. More and more, i am tending to think that the problems concerning jobs and the problems we have concerning the abuse/misuse of the planet/environment are intimately related, linked together by the economy. I would say that is possible (at least in theory) to have a large, technology-based society that operates “sustainably” with a high quality of life for its citizens. But not having seen evidence of such, it remains theoretical imho.

As for the causes and remedies of this “life out of balance”, i can only guess. The existential malaise that Sartré described seems to be growing, if possible. We envy animals and rocks because they seem to know their place in the world. There is such an order, balance, and symmetry to the natural world that human culture can seem like a rash or a blemish. All this from the pinnacle of creation, humanity. Maybe it is the Peter Principle; we’ve risen to the height of our incompetence. How can we be as authentic and balanced as animals and rocks, and still be fully human? Time and mistakes will teach us, if we can’t answer the question now.

Yes, actually that is what I'm getting at. What do we humans have to do en masse to change the structure and thus change the habits? — schopenhauer1

To the sociologists, 'chaos'. This is a courageous thing to say coming from them, of all people. They said this before the 2007-2008 collapse.